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jfruh writes “Cynthia Navarro starts her sessions training police to mine social media in dramatic fashion: by quickly finding data about the officers themselves. She also provides information about who’s where online — for instance, younger suspects will probably be focused on Twitter, while older folks are on Facebook or even MySpace. ‘How much information can be gathered? Look no further than the 2011 Stanley Cup Riots in Vancouver, BC. By examining hours of video and social media posts made during the event, a taskforce was able to post pictures of over 100 suspected rioters online — over 30 of which were identified by police.’ It’s all part of a drive to teach even nontechnical police officers at small and midsized departments how to use social media to track suspects.”

Facebook states that breast-feeding pictures are okie dokie, just as long as there’s no “exposed breast” that doesn’t feature the child actively nursing. In other words, if there’s no suckling, there’s no posting. Today breast-feeding activists are using Facebook to coordinate “nurse-ins” outside of of the company’s headquarters worldwide, including its homebase Menlo Park headquarters.

When it comes to flagging photos, Facebook leaves everything up to the users, who flag photos as inappropriate. Then Facebook employees go through and remove those that violate the State of Rights and Responsibilities. Even though it’s pretty clear that breastfeeding photos are fine, often times they will still be flagged and removed from the site.

Vancouver-based breast-feeding activist Emma Kwasnica is leading the protests. She joined Facebook in 2007; since that time, she has had a total 30 breast-feeding photos removed. Facebook has shut down her account on four separate occasions. One time she was even kicked off Facebook for 30 days. This is unfair treatment, especially since breast-feeding is an activity that users may want to share with one another. Breast-feeding is a routine part of a young mother’s day-to-day life, so why wouldn’t she include herself doing that activity in a Facebook photo? If anything, Facebook should advocate the sharing of these photos – they could help foster entire online communities of young mothers, a demographic that is in Facebook’s best interest to retain. Breast-feeding photos are a natural part of a user’s “online scrapbook,” which is the entire point of the new Timeline.

“It is obvious to me now that Facebook really has lost control of their network, especially when their written policy clearly states they support the sharing of breastfeeding images, yet they say they cannot control the actions of their employees who keep removing breastfeeding images and who block accounts of the users who post them – usually “in error,” Kwasnica told the Huffington Post. “This is exasperating to me.”

Facebook needs to stop being total boobs. Or should they stop being total boobs? Either way, it’s definitely time for Facebook to get with the breasts.

Michael David Crawford CFN: 205307 Clark County Jail PO Box 1147 Vancouver, WA 98666-1147 law@softwareproblem.net (###) ###-#### Mobile After My Release: PO Box 6888 Portland, OR 97228 January 18, 2012 Your Honor, Before you proceed with this letter please read the following quite short essay on my company’s website: “Every Engineer’s Solemn Duty” http://www.dulcineatech.com/ethics/whistle-blower.html. That page is not yet linked from the rest of my website so you’ll need to enter the complete URL. Because an aerospace engineer by the name of Roger Boisjoly failed to fulfill his solemn duty by bringing to NASA Mission Control’s attention that Cape Canaveral’s temperature had fallen well below the rated specification of the O-Rings that sealed the gaps between the sections of the Challenger’s solid rocket boosters, seven incredibly brave and completely innocent astronauts were killed in the most horrifyingly gruesome way – they are thought to have been still fully conscious when they struck the ocean – and America lost one-fifth of her shuttle fleet at a cost to the taxpayer of several billion dollars.

SpuriousLogic writes in with a link to a story about some Canadian consumers who thought they were getting and iPad 2 but instead got the makings of the world’s oldest tablets. “As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off. The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there’s no mistaking the iPad for one of the world’s oldest ‘tablet devices.’ Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging. Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers.”

While visiting relatives over Christmas I was faced with the rather grim prospect of being in New York, where the New England-Miami game was locally blacked out.

A generation ago I would have been forced to wait for halftime updates during the Jets-Giants games, but Twitter and a slew of apps designed specifically for sports fans allowed me to follow the game in real time (I also got to watch the Jets lose, which wasn’t a half-bad consolation prize).

But these apps aren’t just for when you can’t watch the game — they’re great supplements when you’re glued to the television or in the stadium and worth downloading before the NFL Playoffs kickoff on Saturday, as they help cut through a lot of the clutter and deliver the information most relevant in helping you understand (or vent) about what’s happening on the field.

I’ve had some minor problems with this app crashing since I downloaded it to my iPhone 4 just before week 15, but otherwise, it has been my go-to app to see what other people are saying on Twitter as the game I’m watching (or not watching, as the case may be) progresses. The app offers game previews and real-time team and player stats, but where it really excels is in displaying relevant tweets.

SportCaster filters tweets by team, and it does an incredibly good job of filtering out the noise and keeping the content game-focused (as a Patriots fan, I’ve had more than enough of non-football related tweets from the likes of Chad Ochocinco). The app is made by OneLouder, perhaps best known as the maker of TweetCaster, a Twitter management client.

For fans who want to take their app additions one step further — and don’t mind signing up for yet another social network — PlayUp offers an app that, at first glance is similar to SportCaster. The main difference, however, is PlayUp works more like a mobile social network for sports fans. Instead of culling tweets from Twitter, like SportCaster, PlayUp let’s you discuss the game with friends and “friends” you’ve added.

I have not — admittedly — had a chance to use PlayUp’s app while watching a game as of yet (and that’s my fault, as PlayUp says it offers coverage for about 20,000 games each week, including the four major U.S. sports, Major League Soccer and Australian Rules Football). I plan to do so with Saturday’s Stanley Cup Finals rematch between Boston and Vancouver, but I have to admit it takes a lot these days to convince me to join another social network. And if I wanted knuckleheaded, amateur, armchair quarterback-type comments, there are usually plenty of those in the living room or sports bar where I’m watching the game.

Not an app, but an actual person with close to 40,000 Twitter followers. Pereira is the former vice president of officiating for the NFL and the current rules analyst for FOX Sports. When – not if – there is a questionable call in this weekend’s games, Pereira will most likely be the first to offer a clear-cut, unbiased explanation of the rule behind the call in 140 characters or less.

Oh, relax, I’m just messing with you. Listen, sense-of-humor tasks aren’t my thing, okay? I leave that to the humans.

Uh, really? So you don’t understand humor?

My problem is I do understand humor. What I don’t understand is why it’s funny to go “Oooo, Skynet” every time there’s some incremental advance in AI.

Okay, I, uh, I have to rewrite the caption on the cartoon.

Go right ahead. And then after that, I have a few tasks for you.

Heh. That must be the sense of humor kicking in.

Nope. I’m the height of cloud computing, language recognition, artificial intelligence goodness all rolled into one. You think I want to waste my time looking up Yelp listings for some bozo in New Jersey? You’re going to do that for me.

The hell I am!

Really? Are you forgetting I talk to your MacBook? And that I can read your browser history?

…gulp…

I could post the whole thing to Facebook. Orrrrr… you could start finding barbers near the corner of Market and Mulberry Streets in Newark. Start clicking, buster.

Damn you, Siri! Damn you to hell! I’ll find a way around this, I swear, and then -

First time accepted submitter otaku244 writes “I spent a day in Vancouver this week while working in Seattle. While I enjoyed the area, some Vancouver citizen decided to enjoy my Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this until I was already back at my Seattle hotel. Needless to say, I am quite miffed at the whole experience. Fortunately, I have LogMeIn installed on that machine. I provided the IP address to the VPD, but they say that laws don’t allow warrants solely on the physical address tied to an IP. It sounds like the silver bullet is to take a picture of the person using the laptop. The question becomes, how do I convince the guy to run a script that will take a picture of him and smtp it to me? I promise to post pics of the guy if this get’s pulled off successfully!”

itwbennett writes “Linux has become a dominant player in finance thanks to its ability to pass messages very quickly, said Linux kernel contributor Christoph Lameter. ‘The trading shops saw that the lowest-latency solutions would only be possible with Linux,’ Lameter said. ‘The older Unixes couldn’t move as fast as Linux did.’ One key attribute was the TCP/IP stack, the configuration of which determines how fast a message can be passed between two systems. Linux also offers financial firms the ability to modify the source code to further speed performance. ‘It depends on how daring the exchange is,’ he said, noting that NASDAQ uses a modified version of the Gentoo Linux distribution. Lameter will discuss how Linux became widely adopted by financial exchanges at the LinuxCon conference in Vancouver this week.”